hmmm…and if I send a byte value > 127 anywhere in the packet, that value gets converted to "239 191 189". Perhaps sending raw bytes over the network to max was not meant to be? again, a packet sniffer shows the right values reaching the mac.

have you considered using [sadam.udpReceiver]? I wrote that object specially to handle raw byte streams incoming to Max through UDP. You may access it in The sadam Library (see http://www.sadam.hu/software ).